


Here We Are Now (Don't Turn Away)

by Silent-Wordsmith (Shatteredsand)



Series: Welcome to Our Makeshift Kingdom [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Series Rewrite, Blood, Child Rulers, F/F, F/M, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Torture, Kingmaking, Multi, Pre-OT3, Queenmaking, Warrior Women, Warrior queens, Weapons Are Also Weapons, Words Are Weapons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6160894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteredsand/pseuds/Silent-Wordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time The Hundred interact with the Grounders, there’s a spear through Jasper’s chest. The second time, they had lost Octavia and then tortured the grounder who took her. The third time will either save them all or ruin them. Which one is up to The Commander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**“There should be just one safe place in the world, I mean this world. People get hurt here. People fall down and stay down and I don’t like the way the song goes.” ~Richard Siken, _Road Music_**

The amount of awkward tension in Bellamy’s tent right now is stifling. He kind of wants to tell them all to get the hell out, go get drunk, or fuck, or do whatever the hell they want to celebrate the first Unity Day on the ground in nearly a century. But Finn had told Clarke that he had an _idea_ , and Clarke had dragged Bellamy into the mess despite Finn’s protests—“I need him.” Snapped with bitter sincerity, and Bellamy had felt something dangerously similar to pride at the words—and where Spacewalker went, Raven inevitably seemed to follow. Especially if where he went happened to be where Clarke was too.

So, here they all are. In his tent. Which is the biggest in camp but still doesn’t really have room for four full-grown people and all the heavy, unspoken things between them.

“Alright, Spacewalker, what’s this big idea of yours?” Bellamy gruffs out, losing patience with the uncomfortable silence and pointed avoidance of eye contact.

Finn glares at him, like any of this mess could be blamed on him—as if it weren’t his own shitty decision making skills that had landed him with a girlfriend who doesn’t trust him and a love that won’t even look at him—before turning and directing his words to Clarke. “I think we should make peace with the grounders.”

For one, long moment, everything is perfectly still. Then Clarke blinks in incomprehension, because she hadn’t been expecting that, has no idea where Finn got the idea that peace was a thing even remotely near possible. Raven is giving the boy a look like she thinks he might have lost his damn mind. And Bellamy can feel the words on his tongue ready to drop like bombs.

“Are you _insane_?” Bellamy doesn’t think he could sound more incredulous if he tried. A few days ago, this idiot was dying because a grounder stabbed and poisoned him, and now he wants to talk about peace? “You don’t ‘make peace’ with the people trying to _kill_ you.”

“Of course you’d say that. The moment the rest of them stop being scared of the grounders, they’ll stop listening to you.” Finn spits back.

“I don’t give a fuck who they’re listening to as long as they’re alive to do the listening.” Bellamy growls. He’s not some power hungry, warmongering tyrant. He’d seized power in the beginning to keep himself safe, to ensure that he could protect Octavia. He’s kept it now because there’s no one else he trusts to keep the remaining Hundred alive. Well, Clarke. But Clarke is a seventeen year old girl with a doctor’s hands and a doctor’s mind, and she’s not a soldier. Wars need soldiers, need people to make that hard call, that no-win decision. He was a pretty good soldier for a little while there, until the party and the flares and the trial that could have been his death that ended with him in a janitor’s uniform. He could be a good soldier again.

“They’re not trying to kill us.” Clarke murmurs, eyes widening with the realization. The grounders aren’t trying to kill them, haven’t been trying to kill them. Peace is a thing that is, in fact, possible. Maybe.

“Pretty sure Jasper would disagree with you there, princess.” It figures though. He finally stops fighting her, finally admits that she’s a leader just as much as he is—more so, even, and a better one at that—and she starts drinking Finn’s happy sunshine Kool-Aid.

“No. They’re not trying to kill us.” Clarke repeats, eyes brightening with hope. “They aren’t attacking us at all. They had to have known we were here. We fell from the sky and landed practically on top of them. But they didn’t _attack_ us. They didn’t care at all until Jasper crossed the river.” Clarke can feel the words tumbling out in her rush to explain, to make them see. They hadn’t cared about them until the river. The river was important. This doesn’t have to be a war. They can do this.

“Warning shot.”

“Border control.”

Bellamy and Raven speak at the same time. He shoots her a contemplative look. He hadn’t thought mechanical engineering really had a place in this conversation, but he supposes “genius” is one those things that means that Raven is going to be annoyingly—and probably helpfully—competent at everything she puts her mind to. If she’s putting it to war tactics and how to help them all not be dead, Bellamy is pretty okay with that.

“Exactly.” Clarke nods, trying to ignore the look on Finn’s face and the way he’s staring at her like she’d hung the moon just for him. She doesn’t need that right now. She can’t need that ever. Because Finn is a _liar_ , and there are enough things on the ground that Clarke can’t trust, she needs her people to not be one of them.

“They took Octavia.” Bellamy points out because it’s true, and it’s something he doesn’t have it in him to forgive.  Wars have been waged throughout history over lesser acts than the abduction of a foreign leader’s family.

“And poisoned you.” Raven reminds Finn. Which, yes, also a good point. They might not be attacking en mass, but they are still attacking. In the end, it all amounts to the same thing doesn’t it? More graves to dig on their end and none for the grounders.

“Octavia said herself that the grounder was helping her. And he wouldn’t have stabbed me if I hadn’t broken into his shelter.” Finn looks smug, and Bellamy kind of really wants to punch that look right off his stupid face.

“He was willing to let you _die_.” Raven hisses. Clarke frowns, trying not to think about that, about Finn too pale and too still and too close to death for any kind of comfort. He may not be the man she thought he was, but he didn’t deserve to die.

“And then we tortured him.” Bellamy adds for good measure. It’s not his proudest moment, but he’s pretty sure he would do it again. When it comes down to it, he knows that he’ll always choose him and his over anyone else. He doesn’t like Finn, thinks he’s naïve and idealistic and reckless in the stupidest of ways, but he came down on that ship with the rest of them. He lives in their camp and he’s _one of them_ , dammit. Bellamy would kill for him as surely as he’d kill for Clarke or Octavia or any of the others. That’s what soldiers do. “He’s been free for days now. You think he didn’t run straight back to his people and tell them what we did? You think they’ll just forgive and forget?”

“I think a lot more people are going to die on both sides if we don’t stop this now.” Finn counters, and he’s not wrong. Bellamy knows it, Clarke knows it, hell, Raven probably does too. But this is a war, and people die in wars. Welcome to the fucking ground, Spacewalker. Not everybody makes it out alive, and Bellamy is more concerned with making sure that they’re the ones who do.

“Finn’s right.” Clarke sighs. Finn _is_ right. It’s obvious. If they keep killing each other, then people will keep dying. That doesn’t mean that they really have the option of not killing each other. They’d fallen out of the sky, and their first real interaction with the natives had been torture. It’s more complicated than Finn is trying to make it. “But so is Bellamy.”

Bellamy takes in the stubborn set of Clarke’s jaw, the one he hates because it always means that she’s about to do something stupid and somehow, someway, drag him down with her. And he’ll take that small concession when it comes to that look, that admission that he’s just as right as Spacewalker. He’s long since learned to celebrate the little victories. Sometimes, it feels like those are the only kind he gets.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Raven asks, and it sounds more genuine and way less hostile than Bellamy thought it would considering the fact that she’s talking to the girl who had screwed her boyfriend while she was hurtling through space to get to him.

“If we could pull it off, peace would be better. We can’t win a war; we can barely fight one. But it’s not entirely our call, Finn. Bellamy is right. We took and tortured one of them. Pretty sure that’s an act of war.” Clarke wants there to be peace, wants to find a way to make that work, but she’s not going to ignore the fact that it might not be possible. The things they had done to the grounder were awful, despicable, inhumane. If one of them had been taken by the grounders, tortured the way they had tortured him, Clarke wouldn’t exactly be lining up to make peace with the ones who had done the torturing.

“We’re also invading their land. Letting us stay means losing resources to us. They have the numbers and the right. We don’t have anything we can use to convince them not to just kill us and be done with it. Nothing other than the fact that we have guns, they don’t, and right now it’s easier for them to let nature do the killing for them.” Bellamy hopes they’re listening, hopes they understand.

Overwhelming force doesn’t just make peace with invaders. They fell from the sky and they made this little patch of dirt and grass and tree their home, but it was the grounders’ first. In order for them to live here, to make this theirs, they’ll have to take it. Because it doesn’t make a damn lick of sense for the grounders to just give it to them. That’s not how rivaling civilizations _work_. History is written by the victors, in the blood of the unprepared, the unadapted, the _weak_. And Bellamy knows that, in this equation, they’re not going to be the ones doing the writing.

“All I’m hearing is that if the grounders wanted us dead, we’d be dead. And if they decide that they want us to be dead, we’re going to die. So the best option is to make them not decide that they want us dead. So we talk to them and hopefully they don’t kill us all. Or maybe they do, but then they were going to do that anyway. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Why is this even an argument right now?”

Okay. Wow. Apparently Raven is done with this particular topic. Bellamy can admit that she has a point. He can also admit that he doesn’t have a better plan. Not really. All his plans require time—time to build better defenses, more secure gates; time to make better weapons, to learn how to use them—and they don’t know how much of that they have.

“She’s not wrong.” It comes out as this sort of defeated sigh that Bellamy can’t even recognize as his own voice. He straightens his spine and squares his shoulders. If they’re doing this, then they’re going to fucking do it right, dammit. “We’re going to need a plan.”

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Lexa frowns down at her map. Her eyes flicker from one harshly drawn X to the next, trying to find a pattern. There isn’t one, of course, or the matter would have been settled long ago and likely without requiring her presence. Madness is random, following a course that those still in their right minds cannot follow. But until the scouting party returns to report their findings, it is the only thing she can do.

She needs more information. _Better_ information. She needs to know why more and more of her people are succumbing to the madness. She needs to know where the Reapers are holding those they take; too many are gone now for them to be simply eating them. She needs to know why they’ve been taking so many, entire hunting parties lost to them when they had contented themselves with only those who fell behind or the occasional villager who had wandered too far from their village’s protective walls before.

She needs more than roughly drawn X’s on a map, but that is the only thing her people can offer her. Locating the Reapers’ tunnels is no difficult feat, though it is a time consuming one, but anything beyond that has been fruitless. She has lost more than one of her best trackers in futile attempts to find the Reapers’ stronghold and those they had taken.

Lexa cannot wage a war against an enemy so hidden that she cannot see them unless they are attacking. She cannot free those she cannot find. And the Trikru cannot continue on like this.

A helpless sort of rage seizes her then. She wants to tear this useless map from the table and rip it to shreds. She wants to storm through the center of Ton DC, commanding her warriors to follow. She wants to march into the forest, daring the Reapers to come. She wants to lay siege to their tunnels and slaughter those within who have become beasts when once they were men. She wants to do something with _meaning_.

Lexa steps away from the table, from the map she cannot yet find use for. She has been Heda for years now, and she has long since learned the pointlessness of raging against the things she does not have the power to change. This rage, it is not useful. So Lexa will discard it, crush it down beneath her heel until it is merely an echo of sentiment easily ignored.

She can feel Gustus’ eyes on her as she sinks into her throne, the weight of his concern a familiar ghost between her shoulder blades. He worries, though he so rarely gives voice to the misgivings Lexa knows he often has about the state of her affairs. Her personal affairs, that is, for let it never be said that Gustus is anything but the most loyal and trusted of all her warriors. Gustus would die for his Heda.

One day, Lexa knows, he will.

That day is not today, however, and he hovers in the shadows of her quarters silently fretting for her. Lexa wonders if he has, perhaps, forgotten that she already has both a father and a mother, and is not in need of another.

“Speak.” It is a demand, because she is Heda and all her words hold the weight of command, but it is one that both know he may choose to ignore in the privacy afforded to them here.

“You do not think well of the plan against the Reapers.” It is a statement, not a question. Gustus has been by her side since she completed the Trials; he knows her mind nearly as well as she herself does.

“It lacks long-term effectiveness. Even if we manage to find and seal all their tunnels, they will simply find other ways to ravage our forest and our people. This plan is temporary.”

“You have always hated half-measures.”

“They are foolhardy and often cause more problems than they solve. This tactic is not strategy; it is a prayer. One I do not wish to be accountable for answering.”

“You are Heda.” Gustus reminds her, as if Lexa could forget. To be Heda is to be many things, and she knows that the taste of defeat is something she will experience only once, only before her death. The Heda does not lose, _cannot_ lose. If the current plan will not bring triumph, then Lexa will simply have to devise something better. That is her purpose, after all. To bring victory, bloodstained and just, to her people.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Everything is a blur of green and brown as he runs. He can’t hear them following, but he knows they are. He hadn’t heard them in the trees, before, either, but that hadn’t stopped them from putting an arrow in him. He’s just lucky they had shitty aim. He tries to avoid looking at the shaft of wood jutting out of his shoulder. It burns like wildfire, but he can almost pretend it’s just another minor scrape if he doesn’t look at it, if he doesn’t think about the fact that someone shot him with an arrow. It’s not enough to kill him, he doesn’t think, and that’s all that matters right now.

He thinks about doubling back. He thinks about finding that stupid bridge again and going back to the drop ship. He doesn’t think her majesty, the princess of being a pain in his ass, has it in her to just let him die if he goes back and asks for help. But he knows he doesn’t have it in him to go back, to crawl on his knees and beg for help from the people who had tried to lynch him and then gave him the boot when he turned out not to be guilty of the murder they nearly killed him over.

The blur of green and brown smears with black, fuzzy at the edges. He’s dizzy. He wants to stop. Catch his breath. Maybe pull the fucking arrow out of his shoulder.

He wants to not be dead more, so he keeps running.

His foot catches on something. A rock. A tree root. Something. He goes down, panting and swearing and planning all the ways he’s going to kill Bellamy Blake for putting him in this position in the first place. The fall has rammed the arrow into the meat of his shoulder even more deeply than it had been to start, and he’s barely breathing from the pain of it.

When he manages to get to his knees—even that much is harder than it should be, his left arm practically useless and every movement sending his vision tilt-a-whirling through a kaidoscope of colors he hasn’t seen since he was small—they’re surrounding him. Sic of them. They wear misshapen skulls over their faces, and it pisses him off. He wants to look into their eyes when they kill him, they owe him that much, at least.

“Jak em op gon Ton DC. Em laik Heda honon nau.” One of them speaks, but he can’t tell which. Doesn’t really care which. He lounges at the closest one—if he’s going to die, he’s going to go down swinging—but everything is spinning around him and he misses. The last thing he sees is the hilt of a blade crashing towards his face, and then all John Murphy knows is darkness.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Lexa is back at her map, a plate of mostly untouched meats and fruits at her right hand, when Anya sweeps into the room. There is a grin on her face, a rare sight and one that bodes well for her mission. Lexa straightens up.

“General.” Lexa eyes her former First with expectation. She is not so foolishly optimistic to think that Anya will have the news that will solve the problem of the Reapers once and for all—war is very rarely so simple and it’s end very rarely achieved—but any good news would be welcome now. Even if it’s just another potentially pointless X on the map.

“I have a present for you, Heda.” Anya smiles again, and Lexa feels like a small child again though the days of Anya treating her as such have long passed. “Bring him in.”

Lexa raises her eyebrow, because Anya had been sent to find Reapers and how they’ve been using the tunnels to navigate the forest. She was not sent to take prisoners. The Reapers are far too insane to answer questions, to break under interrogation, and they die so very quickly in captivity. Anya knows that as surely as Lexa does; she would not waste her Heda’s time with something so inadequate, would not have declared it a gift.

Ryder enters then, dragging something— _someone_ —in after him. Lexa’s eyes widen a fraction at the sight, the crumpled and still form of a Sky Person, but she is careful to close her face off from any further expression. They are not yet at war with the Sky People, though Lexa fears that it may be inevitable. The land they have claimed is No One’s and had been for many years before Lexa was even born, but it is still Trigedakru land. And Lincoln reports that they have guns now, though how they managed to acquire them escapes him; not from the Mountain Men had been the only definitive answer he’d been able to give.

The threat of them grows, and Lexa knows that she cannot avoid the inescapable forever. They are grown, most of them, and they have the arms of her greatest enemies. They have fallen from the skies and they clearly intend to stay. Soon, Lexa will have to end them for the safety of her own people, but she wants to end this conflict with the Reapers first. Her army is large, and her warriors are strong, but she does not relish the idea of fighting a war on two fronts while still keeping watch on the shadow of the mountain at their backs.

“He was across the border, in Indra’s territory.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“No. Just a small knife. He tried to flee.”

Lexa eyes the arrow sheathed in his shoulder and the blood at his temple. “So I see.”

Lexa is no more eager for this war than she is for any other before it, but if it is coming—and it is, war is _always_ coming—then Lexa will take any and all advantages presented to her.

“Take him to the cages. It seems we will have answers for the Sky People’s trespass.”

Ryder does as he is bid, though Lexa commands Anya to stay when she moves to follow. “Heda?”

“Lincoln is one of yours, is he not?”

“He is.”

“Then the honor of inquisition is yours.”

“Jus drein jus daun.”

“Jus drein jus daun.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Clarke wakes up, head aching and stomach rolling, in the watercolor weak light of early morning to Finn’s face. She jerks away, feeling way too close, though she realizes quickly that he isn’t actually in the bed with her, thank God. He looks hurt by her reaction, and she almost apologizes. Then she remembers that he’s a lying liar who lies, so she doesn’t.

“What are you doing in my tent?” It’s a whisper, but Clarke is sure to put enough ire behind it to make it clear that if her head didn’t hurt so bad she’d be yelling.

“We have to go; I know how to get the grounders to talk to us.”

“And we have to do that _now_?” Clarke is not on board with this plan. Clarke is not on board with any plan that isn’t sleeping off this hangover. She’s had worse, had tried to limit herself to more than tipsy but less than wasted last night, but she still isn’t in the best frame of mind for attempting complicated diplomatic negotiations with the generally hostile locals.

“If we don’t go quickly, I won’t be able to track her.”

“Track who?”

“Octavia.”

“Why do we need to track Octavia?”

“Because she’s going to go see the grounder.”

“She’s going to do _what_?!” Clarke has never woken up so fast in her entire life. She doesn’t know Octavia that well, not really, but she considers her a friend. And Bellamy will absolutely lose all of his shit if something happens to her; Clarke cannot afford for Bellamy to lose his shit right now, she still needs him. “Get out so I can get dressed.”

“Hurry.” Finn says, kicked puppy expression, and Clarke has to stop herself from rolling her eyes at him. He may already know what she looks like naked, but that doesn’t mean that he ever gets to see her like that again.

“And get Bellamy!” Clarke shouts back, wincing at the volume of her voice in her own ears. She needs water, a lot of water, immediately. Finn makes a frustrated sound outside her tent, like he honestly thought that Clarke was going to do this without inviting the only guy the rest of the Hundred actually listen to along for the ride. Not to mention that his sister is wandering through the woods, looking for the guy they’d strung up and tortured not so long ago. Even if they were back at day one, with Bellamy being an asshole of epic proportions and Clarke constantly holding back from punching him in his face, she’d have still wanted him to know about this. He _deserves_ to know about this.

Raven is waiting outside the tent when Clarke emerges. She has a gun in hand, and Clarke didn’t think there were enough of those for Bellamy to start handing them out to anyone other than his lieutenants. She can see him now, across the camp, tugging on his shirt and snatching a gun out of Jasper’s hand. Yelling at him, too, from the looks of it.

Clarke sighs, wondering when, exactly, it became her job to cool Bellamy’s temper so they can get things done in a way that actually works and doesn’t rely on everyone being too afraid of getting shot to do anything other than what Bellamy says.

“Bellamy.” Clarke chastises him, hand on his forearm. He shrugs her off. “Jasper just took over. He wasn’t even on watch when she left. This isn’t his fault.”

Bellamy growls, frustration seeping from him thick enough to taste in the air. Of course it isn’t Jasper’s fault. It’s his. It’s always his fault. His sister, his responsibility, and he’s fucking lost her. Let her slip right through his fucking fingers. Goddammit.

“Spacewalker!” Bellamy roars, impatient to get a move on and find his sister before she does something stupid and gets hurt. “Let’s move!”

Finn runs up then, conspicuously missing a gun, and starts to lead the way to a different part of the wall, away from the gate. A part that is, apparently, ill-fortified and totally a weakness in their defenses that they can’t afford.

“Gun up and at the ready.” Bellamy says lowly, the muscle in his jaw bunching with tension.

“This is a _peace_ mission.” Finn reminds him hotly.

“If they touch Octavia, then it’s gonna be a bloodbath. Make sure it’s not our blood.” Bellamy growls, eyes searching the woods for any sign of his sister.

“This is going to go well, then.” Raven scoffs, and Clarke can’t find it in her to disagree. Some party of diplomats they make: one raging big brother, one hungover not-quite doctor, one mechanic with a machine gun, and a tracker who lies like breathing. Great.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Murphy is not a nark. He’s not a coward, either. He’s a fighter, has always been a fighter. But this, this isn’t a _fight_.

The blonde bitch rips another fingernail from his hand, and he bites through his lip trying not to scream.

“How many of you are there?” She asks again. She sounds almost bored. Like his agony is _tedious_.

“Baby, there’s only ever been one John Murphy.”

She takes another fingernail for that one, but he kinda expected her to. She doesn’t seem like the kind to handle sarcasm well.

“How many are in your camp?”

Murphy laughs at that, because he doesn’t have a camp anymore, does he? They kicked him out, and now he doesn’t belong anywhere but wherever he is. He thinks about explaining that to her, this warrior woman with his blood on her hands, but he doesn’t. He just laughs and laughs until she starts breaking his fingers.

Then he _screams_.

“What do you want?”

Mostly, he really wants her to stop torturing him. He doesn’t see that happening in the near future, though, so fuck this bitch and her fucking questions.

“Well, I kinda wanna see what you look like naked. Like, you’re a total bitch, but I kinda like that. Wanna make love, not war?”

She says something in a language that is definitely not English, Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese, or any other language ever spoken on the Ark or any of the stations that make it. Then she breaks another finger.

He considers just telling her. He’s in a shitload of pain right now, and he doesn’t own Bellamy Blake and his merry band of idiots anything. They fucking banished him and said whatever happens, happens. If he lived, if he died. Not their problem. He could make this their problem though. He could open his mouth and say, _there are less than a hundred of them_. Say, _the walls are weak and have gaps big enough for a person to sneak through_. Say, _the leader is Bellamy Blake_. Say, _the leader is Clarke Griffin_. Say, _I hope you kill them all_.

It would make the pain stop. Even if she only killed him after he told her, the pain would _stop_.

But John Murphy is not a nark. He’s not a coward, either. He’s a fighter, has always been a fighter. And this might not be a fight, but damned if that means he’s just going to give up, roll over, and play dead.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Trekking through the woods is not the way Bellamy wanted to start his morning. Chasing after his sister before she can do something to get herself killed is not the way Bellamy wants to start _any_ morning. Watching Spacewalker haphazardly trying to impress Clarke with his tracking skills while his girlfriend is literally two feet away from him isn’t helping, either. Absently, in a mostly useless attempt to stop thinking about all the ways that fucking grounder could be hurting his sister, Bellamy wonders if he can get away with stringing Finn up from a tree for a night or if that’s the kind of thing that’ll have Clarke yelling at him again. Or get him shot, now that he’s given the toolbag’s girlfriend a gun; she seems like the type who could go through with it.

The group comes to a somewhat sudden stop, and Clarke has to fight not to snap. If Finn tries to explain the finer points of tracking to her one more time—with that stupid, charming smile on his face, like his girlfriend who hurtled through space just to be with him isn’t standing _right there_ —Clarke might actually have to slap him.

“Why’d we stop?” Bellamy snarls, finger already on the trigger and a glare that could collapse star systems pinned to the back of Finn’s head. On second thought, maybe she won’t have to be the one hitting Finn; Bellamy looks pretty ready to deck him himself.

“I know where we are.” Finn says, turning around with a grin. It lights him up, Clarke can’t help but notice. She hates the twinge it makes her feel, remembering when that smile was hers and hers alone, when it meant something more than just a _fuck_ in an abandoned bunker with a guy who had a girlfriend waiting for him in the sky.

“Good for you.” Bellamy snaps. He wants to find Octavia and go back to the dropship; he doesn’t much care about the goddamned scenery. “Which way?”

“Down.” Finn is still grinning, like this is just another adventure to him, like Octavia’s life isn’t on the line, and if Bellamy didn’t need the idiot to tell him how to find his sister, he’s not so sure he wouldn’t shoot him in the back just to be done with all the posturing and sad, not-quite but almost flirting the moron seems intent on keeping up.

Bellamy is really starting to like his tree idea. Clarke probably would yell at him, but she’s yelled at him before, it’ll be fine. He just has to make sure Raven doesn’t have access to a firearm when she finds out.

“Well.” Clarke says, impatient with that smile and the creaking of her heart at the sight of it, “Lead the way.”

And down the rabbit hole they go…

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

She’s run out of fingers, but it doesn’t stop her, doesn’t even slow her down. He can’t scream anymore, throat raw and aching. There’s a knife in his thigh, jutting out just above his knee. Blood is soaking through his jeans, dark red and wet. He focuses on the color. Doesn’t look at his hands, blood dripping from the tips of fingers bent at unnatural angles. Doesn’t look at the knife, gleaming metal sheathed in soft, pale skin.

He focuses on the color. Dark red. If he’s bleeding, he’s still alive. If he’s still alive, then he’s fucking winning.

The grounders can suck his dick if they think they can make a snitch out of him.

“How many of you are there?”

“Told you. Only one John Murphy.” The words feel like sandpaper scrapping up his throat, but he manages a smirk just long enough for her to knock it clean off his face and onto the floor. She kicks him while he’s down too, the cunt.

Someone else resets his chair, and, fuck, he hadn’t even realized there were other people in the room.

“How many are in your camp?”

Murphy is half-convinced that she doesn’t know any other English. The repetition of questions endless.

“Fuck. You.”

She pulls the knife out, more red to focus on. More pain to try and drown out. Moves up his thigh, not far, stabs it in again. He can’t scream anymore, but the whimper that slips loose past lips he’s already bitten straight through is worse. Humiliating.

He switches focus. Swirls the bittersweet copper on his tongue. Thinks of swallowing bullets and choking on them. Imagining that is still better than thinking about what’s actually happening to him.

“What do you want?”

What does he want? What does he want. He wants the pain to stop. He wants to leave this fucking room and this fucking bitch. Wants to burn this whole damn place—the whole damn _planet_ —to ashes. He wants to snarl and bare his teeth, act like the animal everyone else is so convinced he is. He wants to do something to earn the punishment that’s been handed down to him. He wants to lurch forward, wrap his mangled hands around his torturer’s pretty little neck and just _squeeze_. He wants to bite down on the soft skin of every grounders’ throat and _rip_. He wants to laugh as the blood sprays and paints him crimson. He wants to wrap a rope around Bellamy Blake’s neck and _jerk_. He wants to slit the throat of every cursed child fallen from the sky.

He wants damnation. He wants benediction.

He wants it to _stop hurting_.

“Still lookin’ to getcha naked, really.”

Knife out. Knife in, higher still now.

“Next, I will start skinning you like rabbit.” She hisses in his ear.

“This whole psycho thing is kinda working for me.” Murphy smirks like there aren’t tears in his eyes. Like he’s not already counting the seconds until she goes too far and he’s gone. Like he’s not already trying to figure out how long he’ll last before his body gives out or his tongue does.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

The first thing Clarke sees, following after Finn into the hole in the ground, is way more of Octavia than Clarke had ever been expecting to. Also, more of the grounder. And considering that she’s already seen both of them half-naked…

Oh. Shit. _Bellamy_.

Clarke has that thought at pretty much the exact moment that the man in question enters the room.

Bellamy is not a killer. He had shot Jaha out of desperation, and he couldn’t do what was necessary when Atom had fucking _begged_ him to kill him. Bellamy isn’t a killer. He conveniently forgets that fact the moment he sees his sister naked and underneath the grounder.

His finger’s on the trigger and he’s taking aim in half a heartbeat, and things are happening. Other things. People are shouting. Bellamy can’t hear them. He can barely _see_ them.  The grounder is standing in front of O, standing between Bellamy and his sister, and Bellamy is going to fucking shoot him as soon as fucking Clarke gets out of his damn way.

“Put your fucking gun down!” Finn. Useless. In the way.

“What the hell are you doing here?!” Octavia, outraged. But alive. _Alive_.

Shit. Shit. Clarke is standing in front of Bellamy, trying to make sure he can’t get a shot off without going right through her because this grounder is their only hope of getting a message to his people. They’ve made it this far without killing a single grounder, starting now, right before they try to ask for peace, would be the height of stupidity. Clarke knows that. Hell, Bellamy knows it too, if only he was capable of any kind of rational thought when it came to his sister.

“Bellamy. Bellamy! Look at me!”

“Outta the way, Princess.” He doesn’t even really sound human, and this is so much worse than Clarke thought it was. Suddenly, she remembers that the last person who had touched Octavia, had just _kissed_ her, had spent a night eight feet in the air, tied to a tree.

“Bellamy.” Clarke insists, her hand on his gun, forcing it down. “You can’t shoot him.”

“Wanna bet?” Bellamy is damn sure he can, in fact, shoot him. He just needs to get Clarke out of the way first.

“Bellamy Bayani Blake!” Octavia screams, storming out from behind the grounder— _her_ grounder?—and, apparently, giving zero fucks about the fact that she isn’t wearing a damn thing. And Bayani? Bellamy’s middle name is _Bayani_?

“O...” Bellamy sounds lost. Then he seems to recover, pushing past Clarke to get to his sister. With the gun out of his hands for the moment, and Octavia between him and their only chance for peace, Clarke lets him go.

Bellamy reaches out, pointedly ignoring the fucking growl the grounder sends his way when his hands land on Octavia’s shoulders. He scans her from head to toe, looking for any sign that she’s not as okay she seems. He knows her body as well as he knows his own, had changed her diapers and bathed her, helped her change clothes and make new ones. He knows the shade and the shape of her, knows the birthmark on her hip and the dip of her belly-button.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m _fine_.” Octavia steps out from beneath his hands. “What are you doing here?”

“We were looking for him.” Finn says, and Bellamy redirects his attention to the bastard who’d laid hands on his sister. He’s wearing pants now, and a buddle of clothing that Bellamy is pretty sure is Octavia’s is held loosely in his hand.

“Oktevia.” He says, holding the bundle out to her, and Bellamy is reaching for his gun again before he can even think to stop himself.

Clarke sees him move towards his gun again, and, nope. She gets there first, both her hands wrapping around his. “We need him, remember?”

“Not what I was expecting.” Raven adds her two cents to the mix as well, “But, better for us, in the long run. If you can keep Trigger Finger over there from getting itchy.”

She’s right, Clarke knows, she’d already planned on using the grounder’s infatuation with Octavia to convince him to help them. Now that it’s not just an infatuation, now that there’s a _relationship_ there, yeah. That’s useful, and likely to make this whole thing go a lot smoother. But she also kind of didn’t need the reminder that somehow keeping Bellamy in check has become her responsibility.

“What’s going on?” Octavia snaps, pulling on her pants while the grounder passively holds onto her tank and jacket. “Why are you looking for him?”

“Better question,” Bellamy barks, “Why are you screwing him?”

It might not be the most tactful thing he’s ever said, but fuck tact. She’s his baby sister, and this is not okay. She’s only sixteen. Sixteen year olds do not run off into the woods to screw around with the guy who nearly killed one of their own less than a week ago. It’s _dangerous_. She could have died a hundred different ways, just trying to get here. Let alone all the ways he could have killed her, alone in his little hovel.

“Because I want to. Because I like him.” Octavia spits back, tugging her shirt over her head with a glare that could kill a lesser man at a hundred paces. Bellamy is only immune because she’s been leveling versions of it all her life at him whenever she didn’t get her way; he’s pretty sure she actually learned it from him in the first place. “I _like_ him.”

Bellamy swallows thickly. He’s not okay with this, doesn’t know how to be okay with this. He wants to reach out again, take her hand in his and lead her away from here. They could just go, the two of them, just keep going until they reached somewhere far away from the dropship, from the grounders. Just the two of them again, the way it had been for so long. Just the two of them, and him, keeping her _safe_. But if he tried, if he reached out now.

_She wouldn’t go._

“I need some air.” Bellamy speaks in a gasp, looking for all the world like he’s just been sucker punched in the gut. Clarke winces at his less than diplomatic exit, but doesn’t try and stop him from retreating. She’s not going to be able to talk the grounder into believing they want the fighting to stop if she has to divide her attention between the mission and keeping Bellamy from trying to kill him for daring to touch Octavia.

Clarke focuses her attention on the grounder and hopes that he’s a good man, hopes that they can depend on him and whatever he feels for Octavia. They need him, because he’s the only grounder they know how to find, but that doesn’t mean anything if they can’t get him to help them.

“We need your help.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

“We need your help.”

The grounder responds to this the same way he’d responded to all of their questions back when he was their prisoner. The same blankly defiant stare, the defensive set to his shoulders. Clarke is pretty sure that the only reason he’s even still here is Octavia, or maybe the fact that Raven has a gun and the last time he saw her she was torturing him.

“Oh, come on, you’re going to pretend that you don’t speak English?” Raven says, rolling her eyes. The grounder, unsurprisingly, appears to be completely unmoved.

“We want peace.” Finn says, all that painful optimism in his voice and written across his face. That gets a reaction from the grounder, as he turns to look at Finn for a brief moment before shifting his gaze to Clarke.

“This doesn’t have to be a war.”

“You tortured me.”

“Ah, so he speaks.”

“Not now, Raven.” Clarke snaps. “You shouldn’t have poisoned Finn. Or you could have just told us how to save him. We don’t have to be enemies, but you have stop _treating_ us like enemies first.”

“I do not have the power to give you want you want.”

“Then bring me to someone who does.”

He shakes his head, and Clarke despairs. This is it, their one shot at not watching all of them die in a bloody war, and it’s slipping their fingers.

“Outsiders are not permitted within the villages.” He pauses, his big hand slipping into Octavia’s, prompting the girl to smile at him like he hadn’t just shot down their only hope. “But I will bring my leader to hear your plea.”

Clarke can feel a smile of her own growing when she realizes that he’s going to help, that they’re going to be able to do this, that nobody else has to _die_. “Where?”

“There is a bridge to the southeast of your camp. We will meet there.”

“How do we know you won’t just set an ambush for us?” Raven asks, and Clarke nods because it’s a good point and one she hadn’t thought of.

“Because I would not need an ambush to kill you all, I could do so now.” The grounder says it perfectly matter of fact, as if the gun in Raven’s hands, the gun in Bellamy’s just outside, mean nothing. “But I do not wish to.”

“When?”

“I need time to return to my village and speak with my people. Dawn.”

“Great.” Clarke feels weak with relief. Nothing is set in stone yet, of course, but it’s _something_. It’s almost more than she was hoping for. And this mysterious leader might say no, might decide to kill them all just because they can, but, like Raven said, in that case they were always going to. At least now, they have a chance. “Thank you.”

He looks almost confused by her thanks. “I do not know that you will be spared. My people are not known to be merciful.”

“You have been.” Octavia points out, hand not already in his lightly fingering over the slash on her arm.

“That was not mercy.” He looks at her with naked adoration. “It was selfishness.”

“That is _adorable,_ and I’m going to throw up.”

“Helpful, Raven.” Clarke rolls her eyes. The worst seems to have passed though. He’s agreed to help them, and Clarke doubts that a little sass is going to make him change his mind.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

The knife is steady in her hands as she slips the blade beneath the skin. Murphy can still see the shape of it, the sharp outline bulging as it moves across the soft parts of his stomach, stripping the skin to reveal the red-red-red of his muscles.

He closes his eyes, turns his head away from the sight. The taste of bile is still clinging to the back of his tongue and the pungent odor of his sick heavy in the air. He doesn’t want to throw up again. He definitely doesn’t want throw up with the knife still in him.

“How many of you are there?”

“I.” How many of them are there? How many were there? How many will there be? Who counts? Who doesn’t. Does _he_ count? They exiled him. Closed the gate against him. Turned him to the forest with nothing more than the clothes on his back and said _whatever happens to you now isn’t our concern_. He is not them; they are not him. He is not a part of them any longer, they had made that clear with a rope around his neck and crate kicked out from under his feet. He doesn’t owe them anything. He doesn’t owe them this.

He is not a snitch. He’s not. He’s a lot of things, but disloyal has never been one of them. But what the fuck has Bellamy Blake or Clarke Griffin or any one of those assholes who had stood there and let the would-be king and queen toss him aside like yesterday’s garbage ever done to deserve his loyalty? To deserve him taking a beating for them? To stand here and _die_ for them?

“How many?” She presses, twisting the knife viciously.

“A hundred!” Murphy cries, hating Bellamy, hating this woman, hating all the grounders. Hating _himself_.

She pulls the blade out, and Murphy sobs with relief.

“Koden em daun.” She barks and the faceless shadows move to obey. A flash of silver in the light, and Murphy thinks this is it. He’s given them what he wanted now, they don’t need him anymore. He’s going to die, beaten and bloody and crying like a little bitch in some grounder hovel. The knife, the one in the shadow’s hand, the one not still dripping with his blood, slashes through the ropes around Murphy’s hands. He falls, trying not to scream as his full weight comes crashing down on knees suddenly too weak to hold it.

His hands are blue and numb and stuck curled into half-clawed fists, his shoulders screaming as the overworked tendons suddenly go lax and the joint slips back into place.

She crouches down in front of him, and Murphy wonders if this is last chance to escape. One last desperate attempt. But his hands are frozen and his legs are weak, and he can’t do anything at all except lie there, helpless and useless.

“Tell me everything.”

And he does.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Mediation is not the aspect of Heda that Lexa is best known for—when her people speak of her, they speak of her triumphs on the battlefield, of her hard fought for and hard won coalition, of the quickness of her blade and the strength of her strategy—but it is the aspect she finds herself partaking in most often. Two of her generals are before her now, quarreling over the priorities of the warriors remaining in Ton DC. Jak desires a greater focus on hunting the forests for food to help sustain them as the cold months approach. Tristan is concerned about the pauna sighted not too far from the village.

Both arguments have merit. The gorra is much too close to them, Ton DC is nearly on top of its hunting grounds. But, likewise, the heat of this season will be fading soon and with it many of the animals and plants they are dependent upon. The pauna will be of no concern to them if they all starve.

The majority of Ton DC’s warriors have been set to task. Squadrons prowl the woods for Reapers and their tunnels, Anya and hers are interrogating the sky boy in their prison, and the rest stand the watch, prepared to sound the alarm should any come too close for comfort. There are not enough left to give both generals the numbers they need, not without weakening Ton DC’s defenses.

“Em pleni.” Lexa raises her hand, but not her voice. The generals fall silent, though they continue to glower at each other. “We have enemies enough without fighting amongst ourselves. Tristan, take three warriors and track the beast. Find its home and its grounds, kill it if you find the opportunity. Jak, assemble a hunting party. Both of you will return in five days.”

“Sha, Heda.”

“Get yu we.”

Lexa rubs at her temples once the warriors exit the war room, then stands to return to her maps. This war is taking too long. Ton DC cannot sustain it. With most of the gona dispatched to the forest to deal with the Reapers or scouting the potential danger of the sky people, there are not enough left to both defend Ton DC and feed it. And Lexa does not want to burden the other villages by conscripting warriors for aid. Not yet, not until there is something solid for them to fight against. Will not weaken them for Ton DC’s strength until it is prudent to do so.

The Twelve Clans are bound to her and the Coalition, but Lexa harbors no delusions about their loyalty. If she shows weakness, if she gives the Clan Heads even the slightest indication that she might loses this war, the Coalition with crumble. She cannot fight Reaper and Mountain Man and Sky Person and Ice Nation and Mountain Clan. She is barely surviving a three fronted war where all her enemies are too weak or too cowardly to truly attack.

If the Coalition crumbles, they will all be slaughtered.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Octavia is pacing anxiously at the bridge.

Clarke watches Bellamy watching her. He keeps making this face, like he’s about to say something, before looking sharply away. He can’t seem to keep his eyes off her for longer than twenty or thirty seconds, though, before he’s back to watching her.

Bellamy is going to say something. Something about trust. Something about family and loyalty and how everything he’s ever done has been for her and why can’t she just _trust him_. He’s going to say something, he is. But every time he starts to open his mouth, he remembers her looking at him like he was the bad guy down in that cave. So he doesn’t say anything at all. 

His fingers twitch, and he wonders what it says about him that he feels naked without his gun now, even though he’s spent most of his life without and only a few weeks with it. The gun meant he was safe, he was capable of protecting Octavia, of making everyone listen to him so he _could_ protect Octavia. Only now, his hands are empty and Octavia would rather protect the grounder—Lincoln, the jackhole’s name is _Lincoln_ —than let Bellamy protect her and everything is all wrong.

“I should have my gun.” Bellamy complains, again, because he means it. He really, really does. What if Lincoln is just another liar? What if this is an ambush? What if a whole shit ton of grounders come swarming out of the trees to slaughter them all? He’s okay in a fist fight—hand-to-hand had been a part of Guard training, even if he never got to finish—but he’s not stupid enough to think that one unarmed him versus however many of them with their knives and their spears is going to end any way except with them dead.

“This is a _peace_ mission.” Finn stresses, the same exact thing he’s said every time that Bellamy had mentioned his stupid gun. Clarke is about thirty seconds away from smacking both of them and screaming.

It’s not their fault, really. But there’s something really stressful about having been made the de facto leader of a hundred other people, of being the one who’s responsible for whether or not this turns into a bloodbath, and she is _this_ close to snapping. She didn’t ask for this, okay? Bellamy wants to play king, and he does a pretty good job of it for the most part, so long as it’s not about Octavia. This leadership thing was supposed to be his deal.

Clarke is only a “leader” because she’d been a bit more practical at the beginning when Bellamy was still spouting his “whatever the hell we want” bullshit and because Finn keeps following her like she makes the rules about everything except whether or not they’re going to get back together—they’re not; there are enough things on the ground that Clarke can’t trust, she doesn’t need to add who she’s sleeping with to the list. She trained to be a doctor, before the Sky Box and the drop ship and the Earth, not a politician.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but Lincoln had looked at her like she was the leader, and everyone else had just gone along with it, and Bellamy wasn’t even down there for her to say, “no, this guy is the one making the calls, I’m just here to stop him from messing it up because sometimes he’s a serious jackass”. So, here she is on a bridge in the middle of a forest controlled by the people who had put a spear through Jasper’s chest and then strung him up as bait, waiting for the leader of those people to come and tell her what she has to do to make sure no one else ends up dead.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Lexa is the picture of poise perfected on her throne. Back rigid, shoulders straight, boots firmly on the ground. She is stone, unmovable and incontestable. This is the way Heda should preside over her people, collected and attentive and ever so slightly awe-inspiring. This is the way Anya had taught her to assume her throne, though Lexa knows now knows the power of appearing lax and unconcerned, and it is the way she sits now with her former teacher before her.

“The prisoner has broken. He says that there are less than one hundred in the Sky People’s camp, and that they are all young enough that they would not have yet passed their Seconding. They follow one called Bellamy and one called Clarke. He claims that they were sent here because their home in the sky is dying and their people viewed them as expendable. They did not know we were here when they came.”

“And the Mountain?” This is the question with the most importance. Lincoln had assured her that the Sky People’s guns had not come from Mountain Man hands, but that does not mean the two were ignorant of each other. If the Mountain Men had made alliance with them, if the Mountain had agents capable of moving beyond the Mountain’s shadow, Lexa needs to know. And then she needs to kill them all. Quick and bloody, so there can be no mistaking the cost of aligning with the monsters in the mountain.

“He knew of it, but claimed ignorance of the Mountain Men themselves. He and his people had believed this world poisonous. They came because they could not stay, but they did not think they would survive.”

“They might not.” Lexa muses. In the end, though, if the Sky People are not working with the Mountain Men, then Lexa does not need to treat them as a threat. Not now, when there are so many dangers far more imminently present. She will dispatch the Reapers that plague her people, and then, if the Sky People have managed to survive the coming cold months, she will slaughter them for their trespass while they are weak and weary from the winter.

The curl of Anya’s lips, neither smile nor smirk nor frown, is a familiar sight. One that Lexa knows means her mentor has followed her thoughts from their beginning to their conclusion. One that means that Anya is already mentally prepared for the task, for battle and blood. That is what it meant to be a warrior in their Clan, to always be prepared for the violence that is so deeply entrenched in their lives. To not _care_ about the violence so deeply entrenched in their lives, not until the fight was won, not until focus could afford to be lost for a short time.

“Is there more to be pried from him?”

“Doubtful. He is not a warrior, and, even if he were, these Sky People do not train their warriors to keep their tongues.”

“Put him in the cages. He was caught on Indra’s land, and as such it is her right to carry out his execution.”

“Of course, Heda.” Anya bows her head, a nod of respect for her commander and her Heda, and a nod of respect to a child she had nearly more hand in raising than her parents who had gone on to become not only her equal but her better. Lexa has been Heda for many years, received many similar nods from every man and woman she had stood before, given orders to, been obeyed by, but so very few have ever meant as much as Anya’s.

And then, just as Lexa is about to release the tension in her spine and the steel from her eyes, just she is about to allow herself a few, scarce moments of Lexa kom Trikru bare of _Heda_ , the tent is opened once more and Lincoln strikes in.

“Forgive me, Heda, but I bring news from the Sky People.” Lincoln does not dare to meet her eyes without permission, dropping to a knee before her as is his place as a warrior of no little standing, but no _great_ standing either. “Their leader wishes to discuss peace terms.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

“Their leader wishes to discuss peace terms.”

“You _spoke_ with the Sky People?”  This is Gustus, lurking unobtrusively at the right and slightly behind Lexa’s throne during her briefing with Anya and now stepping several steps closer to loom threateningly with a hand on one of his many knives. Lexa appreciates his concern and his protectiveness, understands that they are manifestations of his loyalty to her, but she does not care for the way they so often lead him to forget his place. He is her shadow, her guard, her advisor.

It is not for him to question a warrior who has sought her audience.

Lincoln raises his head then, to look at Gutus, who is his better but neither his general nor his god. Lexa raises her hand for silence, knowing that she need not always speak to make her will known.

“You will answer his question.”

“They came to my base. The two who lead. They do not wish to war with us.”

“We are not at war with Skaikru.” Lexa intones, because they are not. They might be, are likely to be, are nearly inevitably going to be. But they are not at war with Skaikru. Not yet.

“We will be.” This is not a question, though perhaps it should be. Lincoln is not a general, nor a chieftain. He is not privy to the plans of his Heda, he has no right to claim this knowledge of her plans. But he is not a stupid man, if he were he would not be as good a scout as he is, and it does not require exceptional insight into the inner workings of her mind or access to her war councils to know that the Sky People have attempted to settle on her lands and that she cannot simply sit back and allow them to do as they please without repercussion. “But we don’t have to.”

Lexa is not a prideful Heda. She knows that there have been others, in the past, men and women who embodied the Spirit, but allowed the desires and arrogance of who they had been dictate their rulings rather than accept the guiding push of Heda. She knows those Hedas had been vain and weak and they had not kept their heads for very long.

Lexa is not a prideful Heda. If she were, she would have not have been able to forge the Coalition as it is. If she were, she and her people would still be scrimmaging pointlessly over the smallest of slights and the most inconsequential of matters. If she were, she would have waged war against the Ice Nation, would have slaughtered the entirety of a people in her pain and rage and grief.

Lexa is not a prideful Heda, and so she does not need to bring down the might of her army against a hundred ignorant _children_ to soothe her wounded ego that they would dare trespass on her lands. More than that, she is humble enough to admit that war with the Sky People would be a pointless waste of resources. There is no doubt in her mind that she would win, that her army would crush the interlopers with hardly any effort. But she is not prideful, nor foolish enough to believe that she could do so without casualties. Coming out of this war with the Reapers, maintaining a careful eye on the Mountain, Lexa is not eager to see what would be left of her people if she were to begin throwing their lives away carelessly.

If it does not need to come to war, then Lexa is glad to avoid it. But she is not some young, trusting thing, and she does not trust that, proclamations aside, these Sky People are genuine. In the years that Lexa had spent scraping the Twelve Clans together, not a single one of them sought her out. Not one solitary Clan had come to her and said that they were tired of war, of often pointless bloodshed, that they wished for her Coalition and her peace. Some had been eager to align, had thrown festivals to welcome her and her plans—especially in light of what had happened far in the north with the Ice Nation—but none had come to her.

She does not trust that these invaders would broker for peace when no other would before.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Bellamy is about to lose his freaking mind. He doesn’t consider himself particularly impatient by nature, but all this sitting and waiting and not doing anything is driving him mad. Or maybe it’s not the waiting. Maybe it’s the way Octavia can’t sit still, pacing out her nerves for her grounder boyfriend. Or the way she won’t even look at him, the morning after Atom and the tree all over again.

Finn is lurking by the tree-line, his eyes lingering on Clarke the way the never seem to stop doing these days. Raven is looking between him and Clarke, and Bellamy recognizes that sad sort of resignation there. His mother had looked like that every day she went to the captain of their block’s guard. Like she knows she’s going to have to do something about Finn and his bleeding heart, and she isn’t going to like it but she _has_ to. The inevitability of something less than pleasant because something, someone, is worth more than the cost.

Good for her. He thinks it’ll probably make Finn, like, three times more annoying in his attempts to woo Clarke back, but. Good for her. She does deserve damn better.

Clarke is watching Octavia so she can pretend she can’t feel the weight of the others’ eyes on her. So she can ignore her own problems of the moment by focusing on someone else’s. Octavia is involved with the grounder. This, in theory, is only a problem if he puts his loyalty to his people above whatever feelings he has for her. Or if his people are less eager for peace than they are, and the negotiations end in the same damn war they’d been trying to avoid.

He withstood torture for his people, but he had broken for Octavia, to save her. Clarke isn’t entirely sure he would stand against his own for her, but she doesn’t think he would deliberately set an ambush likely to get her killed either. There is still the potential for everything to go all to hell during the negotiations themselves, but she doesn’t think she needs to be worried about all the things that will lead up to them. That’s not nothing, even if it’s not everything either. She’ll take what she can get and be damned happy for it. The ground, she’s beginning to learn, is rarely so generous.

Bellamy sees them first. Octavia is on a backswing of her pacing, back towards the other side of the bridge where Lincoln and the rest of the grounders come through the trees. Makes his stomach twist when Lincoln breaks away from the rest of his company to rush to her, when she sees him and runs to meet him in the middle. That’s his baby sister, and what’s she know about men? She spent fifteen years underneath the floorboards and another in the Sky Box, the only other human beings she’s ever seen him and their mom and guards with guns and frowns and a wall between them before the ground.

Who is this man, this _grounder_ , to show up and think he can take advantage of a girl who doesn’t know any better, never got the chance to learn any better? Octavia is a child, and Bellamy doesn’t know about the grounders, but the Ark—for all the laws he never really put much stock in—would float any man or woman who touched a child.

“You said no weapons.” Finn sounds like he’s actually surprised, and it makes Bellamy snap his eyes away from his sister and take in the rest of the grounders. Despite Lincoln’s insistence that _they_ be unarmed, the grounders have swords and bows and spears aplenty. Bellamy wishes he could say he’s surprised, but he isn’t. He told them this would happen, that they were asking for a massacre by doing this.

“I said _you_ could bring no weapons.” Lincoln says, setting Octavia back on solid ground.

“Linkin does not give orders to me.” The woman speaking is a goddess. An Athena sitting on her horse, looking down on them all. Kohl smeared around her eyes, cheekbones sharp enough to cut, and a look on her face promising murder.

Clarke swallows thickly, tries to keep her breathing steady. The kids—and, god, they’re all just _kids_ —back at the drop ship have improvised weapons, sticks to use as clubs or sharpened to spears, a handful of guns with a handful of bullets. The sword at the woman’s hip is real. The bows strapped to the backs of the grounders behind her are real. Real weapons that would kill far more effectively than the hundred’s makeshift armaments . Real weapons that they know how to use properly, that won’t run out of ammo ten minutes into a fight.

How the hell had they thought they could pull this off? What the hell do they have to offer these people?

“ _What is this, Linkin_?” The woman speaks again, and Clarke cannot understand the words, but she gets the distinct feeling that whatever it is, it isn’t good. The glare she’s leveling at Octavia seems to confirm that.

“ _I am hers_.” Lincoln says back, and Clarke wishes she knew what they’re saying; it feels important.

“ _Treason_?” The woman hisses, hand going to her sword. Bellamy stiffens up, edging towards his sister. Finn puts himself between Clarke and the woman. God, what the hell is going on?

“ _I have not betrayed us_.”

“ _But you would_.”

“ _I would save her. No more, no less.”_

_“There will be consequences.”_

_“I will bear them.”_

The woman releases the hilt, and Clarke can see Lincoln physically relax. “I am Onya kom Trigedakru, and I will hear your plea.” She announces, swinging down from the horse with an effortless grace.

OooO

Lexa spins the knife in her hands idly. Part of her wishes she had donned a disguise and traveled with Anya to the meeting with the Skaikru. But, as Gustus had been quick to point out, it rather defeated the purpose of sending Anya to test the Skaikru’s intentions if Lexa gets caught up in whatever trap the Sky People may have set. Instead, she must simply trust Anya to know the limits of what she can give and what she must not let them take, and to return to Ton DC, whole and with the intelligence Lexa needs.

It is no less frustrating, though, to be made to sit and wait while her general does so. There is nothing to be done here, like this, but wait.

She spins the knife again, frowning at her own impatience. It will take as long as it takes. This was one of the first lessons Lexa had learned. War and battle and debate, they do not care for her schedule. They are not subject to her whims. They are as immutable as the rising of the moon and the setting of the sun. Victory will come when it is ready to arrive and there is nothing within Lexa’s power that will make it deign to do so any faster than it so chooses.

But there is something about this mission that unsettles her. She has sent warriors to die for her before; she will send them to die for her again. She has sent _Anya_ to die for her before, though the older woman has always managed to survive. This should be no different. Should be.

But the Skaikru are an unknown variable. Lexa does not know them, their beliefs and their tactics and what they might do. She has piecemealed intelligence, fragments that do not yet form a cohesive whole. They are not like the Azgeda, whose tactics and patterns of behavior Lexa knows almost better than her own peoples, or the Reapers, who are dependable in their irrational madness, or any other Clan that Lexa has waged war against and bound to her Coalition. Skaikru is unpredictable. Lexa does not like it when she cannot foresee the outcome before it arrives.

She spins the knife again.

OooO

Clarke takes a deep breath and steels herself. This is it, make or break, live or die. Her hands are shaking, but she doesn’t think it’s noticeable. She hopes it isn’t noticeable. Anya doesn’t seem like the type to see weakness as something to be treated with compassion.

Bellamy flicks his eyes over to Clarke, sees the trembling in her hands, the uncertainty in her eyes. It’s slight, but Bellamy had spent the first few weeks on the ground looking for every little thing he could take and twist to make her less of a threat to him and his power, and he’s learned to recognize her tells. She’s nervous, and she doesn’t think she can do this. Which, bullshit. If anyone is going to be able to get them through this shitstorm, Bellamy’s money is on her. She’s too damn stubborn to let this grounder win.

Clarke feels Bellamy’s eyes on her as she starts walking to meet Anya at the center of the bridge. Meeting his gaze, she finds something she maybe should have been expecting, but really hadn’t. He looks supportive, trusting, like he thinks she can do this. Like he knows she can. And it should be him, she thinks, he’s their little rebel king. He’s the guy who makes the speeches and makes people want to follow him even when he’s _wrong_. He’s the one who could talk this Anya into leaving them alone.

But maybe she can too.

Behind her, she can hear Finn moving forward, like he thinks he’s coming with her. Which, no. Even Clarke can tell that’s a bad idea. Anya is coming to meet her, alone. Clarke can’t bring someone else to the center. They have to meet as equals, alone together, or this is going to end before it even starts. But she doesn’t know how to tell him that without wasting time, without signaling to the grounders that they’re just a bunch of children playing at being adults.

Luckily, Bellamy seems to get that, too. He stops Finn without Clarke having to say anything at all. She can still hear them whispering harshly at each other, but that’s not her problem right now. Right now, she has to deal with Anya and everything she represents.

“I am Clarke Griffin, and I’ve come for peace.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

“I am Clarke Griffin, and I’ve come for peace.” She extends her hand, and has to bite her lip to stop from berating herself out loud when all Anya does is stare at the offered appendage like Clarke’s offered her a snake. She puts the hand down.

“You invaded my lands, captured and tortured one of my warriors, launched missiles that nearly destroyed an entire village. These are all acts of war. And now you want peace?”

“Missiles?” Oh, this is going to go great. Clarke’s been at the negotiating table for less than thirty seconds and she already doesn’t know what’s going on. “We don’t have any missiles.”

“The smoldering wreckage less than a mile from Gaithers proves you a liar.” Anya sneers. Clarke feels like a child allowed at the adult’s table for the first time, still too young. She understands the words, but the meaning is lost on her. “Mere days ago, you launched your attack, and now you stand here on this bridge and try to sue for peace? You are a child, and you have started a war you don’t know how to end.”

“Days ago?” Realization sinks in, heavy and inescapable. The flares. The flares had been seen as an attack. Oh god. How is she supposed to come back from this? “No. No, those weren’t missiles; they were flares.”

“You change the word like it changes the meaning. No fewer would be dead had your _flares_ struck Gaithers than your missiles.”

“But there are no dead.” This is important. No one is dead, and maybe nobody has to be. “There are no dead, and there don’t have to be.”

“Your carelessness has already nearly killed more of us than there are of you. We are not concerned with the tally of the soon to be dead. Are you?”

“More of us than are here _now_.” Clarke isn’t sure that the Ark is her trump card or a three of spades pretending, but it’s the only card she has at all so she’ll play it like an ace and hope Anya doesn’t call her bluff. “More of my people are coming. Hundreds, thousands. And not just children, like us; _soldiers_. With guns better than we already have. Are you starting to care about the death tally now?”

If Anya has any kind of reaction about this new information, Clarke can’t see it. She stands in front of her as still and emotionless as the stone they’re standing on. Clarke tries not to despair, her mind scrambling to try and think of something, anything, else she has to bring to this table. Nothing comes to mind. They’re a hundred stupid kids, inexperienced and unskilled in the ways of the ground and expendable in all the grand schemes of those older and wiser than them. They don’t have anything to offer these people. They barely have enough to keep themselves going.

“Is that your bid for peace? Acquiesce or perish? I don’t think much of your tactics, sky girl.”

“We don’t want there to be a war. But we can’t stop one if you kill us all. If the rest of our people come down to a graveyard instead of a settlement, what do you think they’re going to do? Send you a gift basket?”

“I think they should not come down at all. This is our land. By what right do you lay your claim to it?”

“We don’t have any other choice. It’s the ground or death.”

“That is not our concern.”

“Well, what is your concern? Maybe we can help each other.”

“Less than a hundred scared children?”

“We have technology you don’t. Radios that let us talk despite the distance, effective enough that we can still talk to the rest of our people in the sky. Guns, and you have to know how deadly those are; your scouts have to have seen us training.”

“ _Gons_.” Anya spits violently, as if the word is something vile she can’t bear to have in her mouth, with a bitter inflection that makes it sound almost like a different word all together. “They are for cowards and killers. We are none of these. Which are you?”

“If it means survival?” Clarke swallows thickly. She’s out of cards and out of time. “Killers. To the last man.”

Anya grins at that, something wild and wicked and feral.

“You wish to claim this land, Klark kom no kru? You wish for your people to settle and live here as Skaikru?”

There is a heavy pause, and Clarke almost startles with the realization that the questions aren’t rhetorical.

“Yes.”

“You wish to trade with us, to meet and be met as ally, not enemy?”

“ _Yes_.”

“There are conditions. You will meet them.”

“Name them.” Clarke isn’t naïve enough to think that she’ll be able to make all the promises Anya is about to ask of her, but the ones she can, she will. And those she can’t; she’ll find a way to negotiate. Beg for more time, bring the terms back to Jaha and her mom. The actual adults who are actually supposed to be in charge.

Anya’s mouth opens again, but she doesn’t get the chance to speak.

“Clarke!”

“Genra!”

The calls come simultaneously, both sides of the bridge darting forward as they point to the skies.

The sky is falling.

Or, more accurately, the first Exodus ship—the one loaded with the Ark’s most important and their best soldiers to help defend them from the ground’s onslaught, the one that shouldn’t even have been launched for another week—is falling. Not flying, not landing, not descending, not any of those other soft, functional words.

_Falling_.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Bellamy watches the Exodus ship descend, something in his head barking out “too fast, too fast, too fast”. Watches the grounders react to his reaction. And then the words are bubbling out past his lips in the same time as theirs.

“Clarke!” He doesn’t know why he calls out, not really. She’s not in danger, and there’s nothing any of them can do. But he remembers that her mom—her mother the healer, her mother the politician, her mother the betrayer—was supposed to be on that ship. That ship hurtling to the ground, still too fast, too fast, too fast.

Bellamy had watched his own mother float, the heavy weight of his pardon threatening to suck him out into the vacuum after her. He knows Clarke had watched her father float, too, and then turned around and tried to finish the crime he’d died for. He wonders if watching her mom crash to the earth will be enough to finally extinguish the flames of her burning resentment, or if maybe the fire is burning hot enough still to somehow help shelter her from the loss.

Bellamy watches the horror paint itself across her face, as Finn—stupid, so willing to be dashing Finn—steps up beside her, his fingers slipping tightly between hers, still lax, and he doubts it.

Welcome to the band of orphans, he wants to say. Wants to give Clarke a new home and new family, one here on the ground already familiar with all the ways her heart must be breaking. But he’s been too distant and too brutal and too ready to burn all the world for himself and his when _his_ was Octavia and no one else. There is a thread of connection between them—“I deserve to die” and “I need you” and the balance that stands astride on the threads interwoven around them now—but it isn’t enough. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He can offer her no comfort as the Exodus crashes in flames and smoke and wreckage. No solace that he can give, nor any that she would take from him.

He’s been forgiven his sins, made man instead of monster on the weight of her words, but he doesn’t have the power to grant her the same absolution now. What benediction does he have? Her mother is dead. Her mother died thinking Clarke hated her. Her mother died with _Clarke_ thinking she hated her. There aren’t words for that kind of sanctity, nothing he could say that would lessen the agony.

Bellamy’s mother had died hating him, he knows. Cursing him for taking Octavia out, for getting her caught, for being excused his role in his mother’s crime while she was sentenced to die and Octavia was tossed in the Sky Box, likely to only ever come back out on her way to a sham of a trial and then to the executioner’s block.

He wonders if Clarke feels, now, as he felt then. That hopeless, crushing sense of failure.

He doesn’t ask.

Clarke rips her hand out of Finn’s, shoots him a look that promises some kind of pain in his near future, and then turns back to Anya.

“I have to go to my people.”

“We are not finished here.”

“That ship held three hundred of my people, and it just crashed and burned. I need to search for survivors and tend to the dead. If you can’t understand that, then you’re wrong. We _are_ done here.” Clarke doesn’t mean to snarl, to burn bridges they’ve only just barely begun to build. But the Exodus ship has crashed, and her mom had crashed with it, and her emotions have no place in talks about war and peace, but they are here and they will not be quelled by logic or common sense.

Anya smiles that feral grin again, and Clarke is coming to see that maybe that’s what approval looks like on her face. “Go. We will speak again in seven days’ time, after you have seen to your survivors and your dead.”

“Thank you.” The words couldn’t be less grateful if Clarke had willingly been trying to spite her, but she isn’t in the mood to play diplomat right now and you don’t get a gold star for being a decent human being.

“Seven days.” Anya repeats, turning her back on Clarke carelessly, a casual dismissal of a nonthreat. Clarke watches her leave, get up on her horse and ride away with her warriors, because she doesn’t have the comfort of dismissing Anya as a nonthreat, as something that could not harm her. And maybe they’re going to make an alliance, and maybe they’ll have peace, but trust is earned. Clarke doesn’t trust anyone but her own people right now.

And not even all of them, when it really comes down to the end of the line.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shorter than I usually like, but I'm trying to get a more regular updating schedule so just bear with me, please. The next one will be longer, I promise.

The walk back through the woods seems to take much longer than it had the first time. Seconds, minutes, hours slipping away through the branches and roots. Wasted. Clarke tries not to think about survivors, dying slowly and painfully waiting for the only person on the ground who could and would tend to them. Tries not to think about how there probably aren’t any survivors to worry about because the Exodus hadn’t breaked, hadn’t slowed itself at all from the moment it entered atmosphere until the moment it hit the ground and those speeds and that abrupt end doesn’t leave any room for survivors.

Tries not to think of the hundred lost souls waiting back at camp—not for her, no, they still carry Bellamy’s rebellious flag around their hearts, still look to him to lead—for someone in charge, for Bellamy or maybe her when he can’t be found or maybe Finn if it comes down and the King is gone and the Princess is too. But they’d left them all alone, a few harsh whispers in the dawn, and set off hoping to prevent a war while tragedy waited for them only hours away.

Blood, Clarke thinks, is inevitable on the ground.

Bellamy watches Clarke—all her quiet, frantic worry; all her resigned self-condemnation—and he watches Octavia—all her furrowed thoughts and lingering backward glances—and he wonders what the hell he did in some past life long forgotten to have the hearts of these two girls weigh so heavily on him.

Clarke isn’t even his to worry about. She’s just a girl. Stubborn and righteous and _not his problem_. She’d said she needed him, given him a reason to keep breathing when the weight of all he’d done had caught up to him—three hundred ghosts sitting on his chest, suffocating him—but she’d asked for a leader, someone to help her corral the idiot hundred into something united and capable of following orders. She hadn’t asked him to bear her burdens, lighten her soul, worry for her heart. He doesn’t owe her that.

And yet, he still feels the weight of her on his shoulders, on his heart, hand in hand with the weight of Octavia. Some new presence beside the one that he’s carried for so long he wouldn’t know himself without it.

He doesn’t like it, doesn’t want it. He never asked for this. Hadn’t realized that he’d signed away some piece of himself when she’d said “I need you” and he’d followed her back home like they still had a home to go back to. He doesn’t want to care about Clarke Griffin and her too big heart. He has to care about himself so he can care about Octavia, and “I need you” wasn’t supposed to be “Your sister, your responsibility” all over again.

But here he is, watching Clarke and watching Octavia and worried pointlessly over the both of them.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Anya returns to Ton DC without fanfare and without blood. This is, Lexa supposes, the best outcome they could have hoped for. If the Skaikru had planned an ambush, hoping to cut the head from their enemy before the war began, then there would have been blood. Anya’s, Sky people’s, and perhaps her mentor would not have returned at all. But Anya is here, and alive, and unharmed, riding through the gates with her guards.

Lexa does not meet her at the gates, though the part of her that still remembers standing as her Second wishes to; it is improper and unacceptable not to greet your First at the gates, ready to do as they bid. But Lexa is not a Second any longer, hasn’t been for more summers and winters than she had served, and her place is here, in her war tent, plotting all the ways she may make appropriate use of whatever information Anya has brought back to her.

When Anya strides into the room, footsteps as sure and steady as every river Lexa has swum, Lexa pretends that it does not lighten her heart to see her, alive and whole, as if the soldier she’d posted to inform her of Anya’s arrival may have thought of lying to her as something other than treason and therefore death.

“They were genuine.” Anya says, snapping the words like some foreign tongue she hadn’t yet mastered.

“They came to our terms?”

“They begged for reprieve. Their skaiship crashed.”

“I had noticed.” Wry and amused, then the weight of Heda once more because it is a burden given only to those strong enough to bear it and it may not be left hanging for much longer than a stolen moment lest it crush those it is meant to protect. “So they did not accept our terms.”

“They have not even heard your terms.”

That is… Not the best news Lexa could have received. The war with the Mountain is stagnant and indefinite. The war with the Reapers is prolonged and unpredictable and taking entirely too long. She had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that this conflict might be settled quickly and with relative ease, some small mercy from the gods if they would grant her no others.

“But they do desire peace.”

“The desires of mortals seem, at best, quiet amusement to the gods.”

Lexa sighs because she knows this fact well. Whatever the Sky People’s intentions, it is by their actions that Lexa—that _Heda_ —must judge them. And if circumstances force their would-be peaceful hands on a course that Lexa’s cannot abide, then, well. Lexa has waged countless wars across these lands, will likely never cease to wage them until such a time as Heda moves on to its next vessel. It will be hard—her resources spread too thin, her focus too divided—but it will be manageable and then it will be done.

Such is the way of things.

“I have given them a week to find and tend to their dead, and then I will treat with them again.”

“No.” Lexa shakes her head. “I will meet with them. If there is to be a peace, I will not build it upon a lie.”

Anya says nothing, inclines her head in obedience as she should, but not before Lexa sees the look on her face. The one that reminds her that peace is built on lies more often than it had ever been built upon truth. She is not wrong. Lexa has been a party to more would-be ceasefires that had turned to bloodbaths almost as soon as the words had finished leaving her and the others’ mouths. But these people are new to the ways here, heads still lost in the clouds they descended from, and Lexa will not let _her_ lie be the one that wreaks yet another war on her people. They have too many upon them already.

“Linkin.” Lexa turns her attention on the gona. His head is bowed respectfully, and, truly, he should not be a party to this discussion at all. He is a passable healer, a good warrior, and a better scout, but he has no place hearing Heda discuss war and peace and how one might go about to achieve either of those things. But he is the gona who knows the Sky People best. “You spoke to the Sky People’s leaders; they would speak with you again?”

“The boy, their Bos…” A slight, but noticeable hesitation here. “I am his sister’s. They will speak to me.”

It takes a great deal of effort not to react to this new information. She considers striking him down where he stands, considers tying him to a tree and making his treason known. But she cannot. She knows, as surely as she knows that the sky above her is blue and the grass beneath her feet is green, that had she’d just been Lexa and not Heda, she would have followed Costia to the ends of this earth and any other, regardless of Clan. She cannot bring herself to begrudge Lincoln his right to give his heart freely, and to, perhaps, follow wherever that heart may lead him. Even if it takes him away from the Trikru.

“Then speak with them. Aid them with their search, stay within their camp if they will allow it. And inform them that they are to meet me here to find their peace.”

“It will be done, Heda.”

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Miller, Monty, and Jasper meet them at the gates, the rest of the hundred only a few paces behind them. They all start talking at once, about the Exodus ship, about where they’ve been, about what they’re supposed to do now, about how they can’t get the Ark on the line anymore.

It’s overwhelming.

“Shut your mouths and listen up!” Bellamy shouts, and the rabble settles, mostly. He realizes that he should have maybe talked to Clarke on the way here, rather than leaving her to her thoughts, because he doesn’t really know what the plan is supposed to be here. “We need to go search for survivors. Miller, Jasper, Monroe, Harper, with me and Clarke. Monty, stay here and keep trying to reach the Ark. We need to know what happened up there and who was on that ship when it launched. Everyone else, get back to work. We still need to man our parameters and catch some dinner, unless you guys all want to be hungry tonight?”

“I should go with you.” Raven says, suddenly at Bellamy’s side.

“Yeah, me, too.” Finn adds, shuffling closer to Clarke.

Bellamy doesn’t quite roll his eyes at the boy, but it’s a near thing. He’s getting real tired of Finn Collins real quick.

“I can help with the ship. Unless you have another mechanical genius lying around?” Raven points out. Clarke nods to her, because she’s right. She doesn’t think there’s going to be a whole lot for a mechanic to do with the wreckage, but better to have her there.

Bellamy sees the nod and gives one of his own. “Alright, Reyes. Spacewalker, we don’t need you. Stay here.”

“I can help.”

“With what? Expecting to find the lot of them all got up and wandered off into the forest?” Bellamy scoffs.

Seeing that this is about to become the kind of argument they can’t afford to be having right now—they don’t have time and they don’t need the rest of the hundred to see them squabbling amongst themselves—Clarke puts a hand on Finn’s arm.

“Finn, we need you to stay here. Someone has to be in charge while we’re gone, in case Monty manages to hail the Ark. I need it to be you.”

It’s not quite true. Monty has been handling communications with the Ark for weeks now—and something sick and scared inside her tells her that he won’t be able to reach them anyways—but she does need Finn to stay here. If nothing else, the hundred are more likely to listen to him than to Monty if something happens. And, if she wants to be honest with herself, she just doesn’t _want_ him to come. She doesn’t want him there, while she tries to find her mother—her mother’s body, more likely—trying to be her strength and comfort again. She can’t rely on him like that, shouldn’t rely on him like that. She has to start holding herself up. She can’t do that if he there with his soft eyes and his soft heart and his too willing arms. It’s not fair to Raven, and it’s not fair to herself.

They both deserve better than Finn’s half-measures.

“Fine.” Finn softens immediately under her touch, and Clarke hates herself a little. For using whatever affections he has for her against him like this. But it’s for the best. For all of them. He can’t keep following her around like an over-eager shadow. “But be careful, Princess.”

Clarke forces herself not to flinch at the nickname. It feels wrong coming from him, now. A slap in the face. A reminder of everything she’s trying so hard to remember to forget. It doesn’t belong in his mouth, not now, not with his girlfriend standing right next to him.

“Alright, if that’s settled. Let’s go.” Bellamy says, adjusting his grip on the rifle in his hands. “We don’t have time to sit around flapping our jaws.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha. Remember one whole chapter ago when I said I was trying to be more regular with my updates? Wasn't that a great laugh, friends? I'm sorry. Life won't stop, you know, *happening* at me.

Back on the Ark, back in the Sky Box, Clarke had dreamed of forests. Of trees and dirt and rocks. Here on Earth, the idealization had been pretty rapidly beaten out of her. All the wonders she had dreamed of tampered down by the harsher realities of them. Blood glistening wetly against stone, bodies buried in dirt, enemies hidden in trees. Tromping through the woods, again, has long since lost its wondrous appeal.

Maybe it’s ungrateful, to already be tired of this new world her people have been hoping to get back to for nearly a century. Maybe she should appreciate it more. Maybe she would if, just once, everything on the ground would slow down for five minutes and just let her _breathe_.

It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of something when everything is trying to kill you.

Lincoln materializes out of the trees like a fucking ghost, and Bellamy has about point three seconds to get his arm up and push the barrel of the gun away before Miller is letting off a shot.

“Grounder!” One of the others shouts, and shit. Shit, they hadn’t exactly had time to let everyone in on the whole possible peace thing.

“STAND DOWN!” Bellamy looks at his people, still a little surprised every time they actually listen to him. He’d taken power in a vacuum and he can’t believe any of them trust him at all, after everything he’d done with it. “Stand down.”

They lower their guns, but Bellamy can still see their fingers hovering on the triggers, the leery looks they’re giving Lincoln.

“The Commander thought you might have use of me.”

“He speaks _English_?!”

“Yes.” Lincoln shrugs at Miller, as if the boy hadn’t been about to shoot him literally less than thirty seconds ago, then turns his attention to Clarke. “I am to aid you with your search and to show you to my village once you have completed your funeral rites.”

“I thought outsiders weren’t allowed in the villages?”

 “If there is to be peace, then you cannot be outsiders.”

An awkward silence, then, “Something you want to share, Boss?”

“No.” Bellamy and Clarke snap in unison.

“We need to focus on getting to the Exodus ship right now. We can deal with the politics later.”

“You can come. But you stay at the back, and you do what we say.”

“Of course.” Lincoln nods his head, a soldier used to following orders, and it makes Clarke more uneasy, not less. She doesn’t know why. She’s seen the lengths this man is willing to go to for Octavia. She believes that he would never do anything that might endanger her. She’s less sure that he cares about the rest of them. Wonders if his devotion to a girl he’s only known for a few weeks could possibly outweigh his loyalty to his people. How many of them would he help save to keep Octavia happy? How many would he let die, would he kill himself, to keep Anya pleased?

Bellamy shakes his head, like he doesn’t quite agree, but Clarke is pretty sure that’s because he’s still not over the knowledge that Lincoln has seen his sister naked. Whatever his reservations, he doesn’t voice his objection, so Clarke is content to let it lie. If he has a problem with it, he can tell her. If he has a problem with it, he will tell her. If Clarke knows anything, it’s that Bellamy Blake will absolutely tell her when he has a problem with her.

“Raven.” Bellamy’s looks between her and the Grounder, “Keep an eye on him.”

The salute she fires back is sloppy and sarcastic and she’s his people, now, but he remembers that she is not one of his hundred. She came here for Finn, and for Abby Griffin, and she made herself right at home in their makeshift village of tents of debris, but she didn’t storm the earth behind his sister. She never took up his chant, never looked to him to lead because “whatever the hell we want” sounded better than “wait for the adults, wait for the Chancellor”.

Raven is loyal to the hundred, has no other choice but to be, but she isn’t loyal to him. Or maybe she is. Maybe she will be. Maybe that’s why she’s doing what he says now, instead of blowing him off the way her boyfriend so often does.

Huh.

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

The wreckage is…

There aren’t words for it. There should be. Maybe there used to be. But they’re so far removed from the Old World. They’ve grown up in space, and death has always been silent and clean. Something felt only in the absences left in its wake. Someone pushed a button and they were gone. Just gone. It wasn’t like this. Nothing has ever been like this.

It’s hot, all that smoldering metal, and the _smell_. Clarke’s never smelt burning flesh before, and she’d have preferred it if she wasn’t smelling it now.

There’s no trace of survivors. No trace of people at all, other than the stench.

Bellamy is shuffling about, absently keeping Clarke in his peripheral vision, and he should be looking harder, maybe, but he’s not stupid and he’s not naïve. There’s no one alive in that crater. The knowledge settles coldly in the pit of his stomach. It feels like grief, even if the only people he gives a damn about are already safe(ish) on the ground, and it feels like guilt. If he hadn’t pressured everyone to take off their wristbands, if he hadn’t tossed Raven’s radio, if he hadn’t been so damn selfish...would it be different? Would the Ark have had more time to launch the Exodus ship? Would they have noticed whatever failure lead to this crash before the launch? Are these deaths—Clarke’s mother’s death—on his hands now too?

And if it’s not his fault, then whose is it? Who do they turn to with the blame? There’s no Murphys here to string up, to give the people what they want. Just him, and Clarke, and the stupid fucking council that thought a hundred juvenile offenders would give one solidary fuck about what happened to the people who condemned them to die without warning and without trial. It makes him angry, replaces the ice in his gut with fire, and he has no one to shout at, no one to punish.

And nothing he can do to help, which is worse.

It’s getting dark now, their day spent hiking through the woods and negotiating for a peace they still might not get and shifting through the wrecked ruins of some small part of the world they used to know, and Clarke is tired. There are no survivors. There are no bodies to bury, no faces to recognize and mourn. Raven is digging in the metal carcass, picking at the bones of the only body spared the flames, and Clarke is _tired_.

She’s not helpful here, not now. She’s thinking of her mother and the last thing she said to her, spat at her, raged at her. She’s thinking of the dropship and leaving Finn in charge, leaving Monty to sort through the static and establish that Exodus ship or not there’s still life in what was their home. She’s thinking of Anya and seven days to grieve and then another floundering attempt at peace. She’s thinking that she can’t handle this, doesn’t know how to even start trying, and everyone needs her to do it anyways.

“Holy fucking shit, are you trying to kill literally all of us?!” Raven’s screaming pulls Clarke out of her head, whipping around to see what’s set her off. It’s Lincoln she’s shouting at. It takes Clarke a second to figure out why—Raven is not his biggest fan, what with the Finn-stabbing, but she knows how important he is to their potential peace—and then it clicks like a bullet chambering.

Lincoln’s started making torches. Only one is lit, right now, and he’s still on the outskirts of the crash, but, yeah, Clarke can understand the yelling. Raven snatches the lit torch straight out of Lincoln’s hands, and Clarke wonders if he meant to let her as part of his peaceful duties or if he’s simply too caught off guard by her vehement reaction to stop her, and tosses it to the ground, stamping out the flames with her boots.

Bellamy is there half a second before Clarke is, hands up in an attempt to pacify the angry mechanic.

“Do you know how fucking flammable this place is?” Raven will not be calmed.

“Clear the area!” Bellamy shouts, command in his voice, and Clarke is grateful that he did it because Clarke isn’t sure she has the strength of voice to make them all listen to her right now, or even for all of them to hear her.

“It’s dark. I wanted to help you see.” Lincoln explains, seemingly bewildered by Raven’s outburst.

“Let me make this real simple.” Raven surveys the assembled rescue party, eyes on each and every one of them, like she’s counting, and then she stalks off towards the wreck again. She does something Clarke can’t really see, picks something up and touches it to something else before, “Fire in the hole!”

She throws whatever she has with spectacular aim at one of the small, distant, smoldering fires and the concussive **_boom_** that follows both proves her point and makes Clarke swallow back bile. She knows, academically, how quick to ignite and how explosive rocket fuel is. She knows, logically, that that’s the reason there are no bodies left to be found, barely anything left of the ship itself. She knows, abstractly, that this is what killed whoever survived impact. But the visual example, the concrete evidence, it turns her stomach. Is that how her mom died? Screaming when the fuel sprayed and the flames caught and she turned to charred bones and ashes?

“Keep it together, princess.” Bellamy considers reaching a hand out to touch her shoulder, her elbow. Maybe hold her hand. But they’re not friends, not really, and he doesn’t think she even wants to be. They’re leading the hundred together because they can’t do it alone, because she needs him, because he needs her, because they work well together. They’re not friends, and it’s not his place to offer her comfort. He makes the words soft, though, because he needs her not to fall apart, they all do, but he knows what losing a parent does to a person, what losing both parents does to a person. He wants her to know that he isn’t judging her for this moment of weakness, however much he can’t afford to really let her have it.

“I’m fine.” Clarke doesn’t believe it herself, and she can see that Bellamy doesn’t either, but it’s the best she can do right now and he doesn’t call her out on her it. It’s enough, because it has to be. “We’re not going to find anything in the dark, we should head back.”

“Yeah.”

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Patience is a trait near invaluable to a commander, and Lexa has always held it as one of her best. Titus would argue her mastery of detachment, in the wake of Costia. Gustus would claim it to be her skill at diplomacy, twisting words until all head’s bowed to her as they should. Anya would state that it is her strength of will, forcing those who would disagree to bend the knee and submit. But Lexa knows herself, every facet and every aspect that each of her mentors and teachers have only ever seen in transitory shades, and she knows that without patience she would have nothing.

Patience, Lexa cultivates in herself as surely as her farmers carefully tend to their crops, and she reaps the rewards of calmly waiting for the right moment to speak, to act, with every breath she continues to take. Patience is all that allows her to listen to the Azgeda Ambassador when she still dreams of slaughtering his queen for what has been taken from her, to stay her hand and bide her time for the blood she is owed. Patience is all that permits to shape her arguments against those who would oppose her, to coil her solutions in soothing softness or arrogant harshness as befits the argument. Patience is all that gives her the strength to swallow her soft frustrations and forge them into steel that cannot be broken by other’s floundering, to stand tall with her convictions and know that they may not coerce change this moment, but they will contour the next.

Lexa lives by patience in all her varied positions of Heda. The warlord, the politician, the god, all bend the knee to a simple truth: it takes as long as it takes. Patience is near invaluable to a commander, but, gods, she feels like she’s running out.

The Mountain hovers, malignant and omnipresent, over her and her people. Reapers cull her numbers, decimate her villages, terrify her people. Madness lurks amongst those she would count as hers, and there are no preparations she can make for when one may snap and turn from loyal soldier to frothing beast. The stars have fallen and seek to turn her lands to theirs as though their very presence makes it owed to them, as though generations of Lexa’s people have not bled and died for the earth they wish to build their homes upon.

There is too much happening, and not enough.

Heda, sitting on her throne, owing her people solutions and seeing none but “wait and see”.

She aches to send a messenger to Polis, to her ambassadors. Her blood thrums beneath her skin, begging for her to demand all the armies of the twelve clans march on the Mountain, A pulsing in the hollow of her throat snarls for her to lead a warband into the Reaper’s tunnels and slaughter men  turned to animals like the beasts they have become. Her fingers itch to summon Anya, to retract their gift of days, to order a resolution to this not-yet war now; the only immediate available course of action not already fated to end in pointless bloodshed and death.

But Anya had spoken with the Sky People with Lexa’s full authority behind her voice, granted the right to speak as if she served the Spirit Itself, not merely Its vessel, and she had made them a promise of time. Heda cannot renege so carelessly, so thoughtlessly. Heda cannot be seen as fickle, as untrustworthy, as an Oathbreaker. The Coalition would crumble if it could not rest in the belief that Lexa will keep her vows to shelter all of them from each other, to ensure fairness in trade between them, to protect all who would live and fight and die in the service of her name.

Beyond even that, though, Lexa would not force anyone to the negotiating table in the wake of tragedy. She has been in that position, bile at the back of her throat and heartbeat a furious wardrum against her ribs as she stared Nia down and forced her submission to Heda and the Coalition and all the laws within. She could not stomach the idea of attempting to put the Skaikru in that same place. Not as a powerplay and certainly not simply to quell to her own impatient frustrations.

Still, the inaction of it all grates her nerves.

“Gustus,” Lexa commands, and her guard comes to attention at the first breath of sound. “Inform Anya that I have need of her.”

“Sha, Heda.”

///                                                                                               ///                                                                                              ///

Murphy is actually disappointed in himself when he’s surprised that the blonde bitch comes back, a slighter brunette following. How stupid of him to think that just because he gave her what she wanted that she wouldn’t come back and hurt him again. Ask him more questions, ones he doesn’t have the answers to this time. Or maybe just because she got off on it, who the hell knows. He should have learned better by now. The world loves to kick the beaten dog.

“Hey, baby, who’s your friend?” Murphy forces some approximation of a lecherous leer onto his face. He may have broken and he may have spilled all the beans, but fuck if he doesn’t still have his pride despite it. Breaking him is going to be an ordeal each and every goddamned time Blondie wants to give it a go. He refuses to let himself become another mangled carcass just waiting for the next arbitrary, unnecessary blow. “Didn’t know threesomes were on the table.”

As per usual, neither grounder gives him any kind of visible reaction to his jeering. Fucking grounders and their fucking expressionless fucking faces.

“Breik em au.” The shorter one says, orders it sounds like. He’s used to cheekbones over there being all large and in charge, but if jawline over there wants a turn wearing the pants, what the hell, right? He’s not much invested in who happens to be the one cutting into him.

Someone else, one of the stationary, shadowy guards, moves and opens the cell they’d shoved him into, still battered and bleeding. He thinks about running, for a second. But just for a second. Because the leg Cheekbones had played pincushion with still won’t hold his weight and the muscles of his stomach are still a quivering, _visible_ mess from her half followed through promise to skin him like a rabbit. He wouldn’t make it two steps, might not even make it one, and he’d been ready to die a few hours ago with the knife in his skin and his blood all over the floor and Blondie Bitch looking down at him like some goddamned waste of her precious fucking time, but he isn’t ready anymore.

John Murphy is a fighter. More than that, he’s a fucking survivor. So, fuck it all. Fuck whatever they want from him, they can have when they take it from him, kicking and screaming. And if they want his life, fuck them. They can have it when they’ve _earned_ it.

He shuffles out his cell, though, because that’s clearly what they want, and that’s what he wants too, and he’d rather walk out under his own flagging power than have them beat him to the floor and drag him out.

Jawline over there stares him down, appraisal in her eyes as clear as Cheekbones’ distain and his other guards’ disinterest.

“Well, don’t you look as tightly wound as they come.” Murphy sneers at the newcomer, curling his tongue behind his teeth. “Here to relieve some…tension?”

Cheekbones looks about twice as murderous as he’s ever seen her, and she’s half a step towards him before the other girl stops her with a careless flick of her wrist. Blondie settles back into place beside her, but her glare is definitely far more interested in him than she’d managed while actively torturing him. It’s unsettling. He’s been trying to piss her off for a while now, with all his misplaced bravado, but now that he’s managed to succeed, he almost wants to take it back. There’s not much more she can do to him that she hasn’t already done, but he doesn’t want to see what her interrogation skills are like when it stops being professional and starts being personal.

Slowly, like a glacier receding, Jawline’s brow rises. It’s an imperious motion, almost mocking. Then, just as slowly, she cocks her head to the side, some strange new bird of prey that only _looks_ human. Cheekbones has tortured him to the breaking point and past, but something about Jawline sends a different kind of shiver down his spine. He’s scared of her, he’s disgusted to realize. He’s just about absolutely terrified of whoever she is, whatever she is, and not just of what she might do to him, the way Blondie Bitch scares him.

 “Release him.” Jawline shrugs and even that should-be casual action looks regal and otherworldly.

“Heda.” Cheekbones starts, and stops again when Jawline makes the same hand gesture at her.

“Release. Him.” She restates firmly, and the ice in her voice chills Murphy down to the bone. “Disha Skaikru natrona nou ste oson dula.”

For the record, Murphy fucking hates whatever fucking language that is, because they’re clearly talking about him and he’d be thrilled if he knew what they were saying.

“You are free to go, Murfi kom Skaikru.” Jawline says.

“Go _where_?” He scoffs. Where the fuck does this bitch think he’s going? Back to the Dropship? They banished his ass, under threat of death. Wonder around the woods some more until the next group of grounders decides to capture and torture him?

“That is not my concern.” Another of those carelessly eerie shrugs. “Cause no trouble on my lands and my lands will cause no more trouble to you.”

Murphy doesn’t buy it for a second, but since his only other option is to stand around until someone gets impatient and puts something sharp and pointy through his soft bits, he has no choice but to fucking go along with it anyways. It’s not like he’s going to make it far with his leg messed up like it is, with his stomach fucked like a dead squirrel. He won’t be able to forage or hunt or even steal.

He’ll be dead within the week. Slowly. Painfully.

But damned if he’s going to stand here and beg for mercy from the pieces of shit that put him in this condition to start with.

Fucking. Grounders.


End file.
